


what follows

by Lise



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Loki, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Loki, Kid Thor, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Canon, Pre-Thor (2011), Whump Without Plot, look I have fun doing what I do and that's what matters, should I tag for children in peril
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In any childhood, there are always accidents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what follows

**Author's Note:**

> A while back on my tumblr I asked folks for whumpy prompts that did not require a lot of plot, and ended up with some really great prompts that were a lot of fun to write. (Also, why isn't WWP a thing like PWP is, I think this should be a thing.) 
> 
> This was one of them. I don't write a lot of pre-canon stuff, but every so often it's fun to poke around in a time before shit went _really_ sideways and just...play with shit going just a little sideways. 
> 
> I can still be found on that [trash website](http://veliseraptor.tumblr.com), writing stuff like this and complaining about various things that bug me.

Loki’s ears were ringing. 

His ears were ringing and he couldn’t make sense of anything. Someone seemed to be pounding on his chest and it  _hurt_ but he couldn’t figure out who it was or why they were hitting him or why breathing felt like he’d inhaled spikes instead of air. The world tilted lazily and he realized he was not, in fact, upright, and everything  _hurt._

He tried to breathe in again and heard an awful whistling noise but his lungs just filled with more spikes and he was fairly sure he was looking at the sky, an ugly color like a bruise, and a red-and-gold blur shouting something he couldn’t hear.

The world slipped away edges first. Loki thought he ought to be alarmed, but mostly he was just confused. 

* * *

He woke next in the Soul Forge, swathed in its strange, prickly energy. “Stay still, Loki,” said his mother’s voice, still sounding strangely distant, like his ears were stuffed full of cotton. “You were badly hurt.” Her voice trembled, just a little.

 _What happened?_ Loki wanted to ask, but when he opened his mouth it came out as a garbled sort of noise, barely intelligible. He registered pain as something distant, still aching in his lungs. His heart seemed to stagger and he heard a low murmur: “still irregular, we need to-”

“Mo-ther?” He managed. His head felt heavy, like if he wasn’t held up by the energy around him it would fall off his neck. 

“Hush now,” she said. “You are going to be fine.” 

One of the healers gestured and his arm lifted, coming into Loki’s vision. He stared at it, mouth opening, at what looked like red fissures in his skin and his wrist at a strange angle. He swallowed convulsively, trying to remember - to remember-

(A flash of light and  _pain_ and  _heat_ so brief and intense he thought he would evaporate into a mist like clouds on a summer day-)

Loki felt himself start to shiver and knew it was shock, or perhaps fever, but he was _hurt_ and he couldn’t remember  _why_ and what could do that to skin, why did his heart feel like it kept skipping beats?

“Loki,” his mother said, more urgently, and then she was there, touching his face, guiding his eyes to her face. “Sleep now.”

He went out like a light, Frigga’s magic pushing him down, down, into a dark lit only by flashes of white light and Thor’s voice crying “Loki, see what I can do-”

* * *

Loki’s arms were swatched in bandages, as was much of his body, but he could breathe again, and his heart seemed to have remembered its purpose. His ears still ached, the burst drum in the left healing slowly. It was possible, the healers told him, that there could be lingering damage. His wrist had been set and he was assured the exhaustion, the weariness and confusion, would fade in time.

The healers were happy to tell him all this. What they hesitated over was discussing what had happened. Their eyes slid away and they excused themselves.

And Thor had not appeared.

Before, when he had been hurt, Thor had nearly broken down the doors to reach him even when the healers said he could not. But now…Loki had not seen him for several days, and he was beginning to fear. When he asked his mother about it, she shook her head and said, after a moment, that she expected Thor would visit him soon.

“And will  _he_ explain what everyone is tiptoeing around?” Loki asked, a little irritated. He was not a  _child_ anymore. Instead of scolding him for his pique, however, his mother only looked like she might cry.

“Loki,” she said, but then trailed off. “You still remember nothing?” She sounded almost hopeful. Loki tried, as he had been trying, but it was still a vague blank except for dreams and half nightmares.

“I would not need to remember if someone would just tell me,” Loki said hotly, but then his chest started to hurt and he had to lie back and focus on breathing, and when he tried to bring the subject up again after Frigga turned him gently away from it. Loki began to feel sparks of fear and turned his back on Frigga, falling into sulky silence. 

When she left, however, he just felt lonely and frightened and his wrist felt like it was aching again. Had Thor been hurt? Had Thor been  _killed?_

His mind spiraled into darker and darker waters, fear’s claws hooked deep in him.

* * *

Thor came at last while Loki was sleeping fitfully. Apparently his temperature was still high, and he could feel it - his muscles felt like every part of his body had been beaten with a hammer. 

Loki woke at the soft sound of footsteps and turned his head. Thor poked his head through the door, followed slowly by the rest of him, moving almost gingerly. He looked nervous and uncertain - quite uncharacteristic - but unharmed, and Loki felt a great swooping relief in his stomach. 

“You’re alive,” he said, pushing himself up on his elbows in spite of how his arms trembled. Thor froze, his eyes meeting Loki’s for a split second before dropping to the floor. He looked startled. 

“I am - of course I am alive,  _you_ are the one who…” 

“No one will tell me what happened,” Loki interrupted, “and you weren’t here, and so I imagined…” But spoken allowed it sounded very foolish, and so he covered with a scowl and a, “so where  _were_ you, then? I have been terribly bored.” 

Thor, to his surprise, did not scowl back but rather bit his lip and edged closer. “Mother said you did not remember,” he said, voice sounding oddly subdued. Loki began to feel an uneasy churning in his stomach. 

“I do not,” he said. “Are  _you_ going to tell me?”

Thor scuffed his foot on the floor. “I’m - I am-” He seemed to be fightnig himself, and then the words spilled out all at once. “I am  _sorry_ , Loki, I thought I knew - I thought I could - I just wanted to show you how I can make storms come-”

Loki felt his eyes widen and remembered the spidering fissues on his arm (on his chest too though he couldn’t see them) and Thor’s voice crying  _Loki, Loki look, see what I can do._

His arms shook and he dropped back to the bed, staring mutely at his brother. “Oh,” he said in a small voice. Thor’s face crumpled and he reached for Loki’s hand but he pulled back in sudden fear, half feeling that some spark would jump from Thor to him and set him on fire again. Thor had always been a shelter, his protector.

“It was an accident,”Thor said, sounding desperate. “I thought I could control it! I didn’t think - I didn’t mean for you to get hurt! It happened so fast-”

Loki remembered the bruise sky and red and gold blur pounding on his chest. The healer had told him that his heart had sustained serious damage. Had stopped. Lightning, he thought dully. It must have been lightning, coursing through his body. Loki tried to imagine it and felt sick. 

“Please don’t be angry at me,” Thor said, his eyes wide and wet. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

 _But I did,_ Loki wanted to say,  _but I did get hurt,_ but Thor’s expression was pleading, on the verge of tears, and Loki did not want him to go away again. “I’m not angry,” he said, which was a small lie, but he could be not-angry so that Thor would stay.

Thor’s shoulders slumped with obvious relief and when he reached for Loki’s arm and squeezed it Loki did not flinch back. He did close his eyes, stomach still churning uneasily, adjusting to this new reality where Thor could hurt him - not slightly, not incidentally, but  _really_ hurt him. 

“You should’ve come sooner,” he mumbled. 

“I should’ve,” Thor agreed quietly. “But I’ll stay now. I won’t let Eir make me leave. I promise.”

* * *

They released him, at long last - Thor, despite his oath, had been ushered away by his tutor. Frigga and Odin were in a council meeting. The healers told him he could wait until they returned, but Loki shook his head stubbornly and made his way back to his rooms with only the company of a servant.

It was a relief to find himself alone.

Loki touched his left ear softly. It seemed to be taking a long time to heal. 

After a long moment, he peeled off his tunic with slow, careful movements and moved over to the bathroom to look in the mirror, staring at the bruises on his shoulder and hip where he’d hit the ground. The energy of the lightning coursing through his body had sent him flying. Stopped his heart, damaged muscle as it spasmed, cracked his wrist as it landed. Made him forget how to breathe, for perhaps the space of a minute. Superheated the air in his lungs. 

Burned his skin.

Loki began to peel the bandaging still wrapped around his chest away, carefully, a layer at a time. Perversely, he wanted to see. It didn’t hurt much anymore, the wrappings more a caution than anything.

When the last strip fell away, Loki let it fall to the tiles and stared at himself, meeting his own eyes before looking down. 

A map of fractal lines, the ugly color of new scars, darted across his body. He traced one with a very light fingertip that he couldn’t feel.

Little bolts of lightning etched on his skin. 


End file.
